Carl-Richard

It's not really that they have a more accurate sense of reality. It's that they have a different sense of reality than you, and they share this sense to some extent, which makes it seem like it's "Reality". There are probably things you are aware of which they aren't and which affect them in ways which they are not aware of. In that sense, you have a more accurate sense of reality than them. In a sense, it's like this for all people; we all have different perspectives unique to ourselves, which is one reason why you should be skeptical of other people's views, but you shouldn't completely disregard them either. You should learn from them, like you're doing now. You've so far focused on your lacks due to this new knowledge, but I'm telling you it's possible to focus on your strengths and positive sides as well.

Bro, if you disable watch history, you don't escape the algorithm. You get the normie algorithm 😭 Eliminating all entertainment from your life is going overboard. You eliminate Shorts because they are so undeniably garbage on so many levels.

Do it.

Astonishing person, astonishing speech. Other than having co-written and co-directed The Matrix Trilogy with her sister, she is an early trans activist who gives a detailed insight into the struggles that are possible with gender identity and how it interracts with questions around anonymity and privacy when entering the limelight. The message also applies more broadly to life. That part of the speech is actually the most inspiring and insightful. I just said "wow, wow, wow". And the way it's written, paced and delivered is just very good.

I've grown up with an irrational cheapness mindset forced upon me, and it took a while before I realized "but I'm supposed to save money to live life, no? What about living life?". Of course, that is not me being reckless and spending all my money. It's me taking careful steps to assess the places where my cheapness is indeed irrational and where I can open myself up to actually enjoying the life that the cheapness is supposed to serve. Maybe you can inspire a similar process in him (if he indeed considers himself a rational person). For example: I eat eggs everyday: should I buy the cheapest eggs or should I invest in something that I eat every day and choose the option that is better for my health (and probably tastes better)? For me, I buy the best eggs. I live in a small city by international standards: should I walk to class, to the store, to the gym and spend maybe 1-2 hours on that every day or should I invest in a city el-scooter membership where I cut down that time to maybe 15-25 minutes and use that spare time on studying and getting better grades? I pick the scooter membership. If I was really stingy, I would buy my own scooter, but there are practical downsides to that (charging, theft, breakage, parking, carrying). Simplifying practicalities can be a huge time saver, money saver and mental health saver in the long run. Even practicalities aside, do I want to live a life where I by principle deny myself access to the newest technological inventions and all the functional perks and aesthetic experiences that come with them (even if they don't improve my life in a strict productivity sense, which is highly unlikely, but let's assume that)? Probably not. Now, what do I not do? I don't buy new clothes unless my old ones need to be replaced (which is a highly limited and basic selection, not Leo level though with the same black/white shirt ), same with my phone, my computer or other technological gadgets. But when I do need to replace those things, I will buy close to the best I can buy (more so for technology than clothes), which goes back to the previous paragraph. As for engaging in things that might seem expensive to some (like an el-scooter membership), I do factor in other aspects of my budget where I'm less expensive than most people: I don't buy fast food, snacks or drinks, I don't eat out often, I don't go out or party often (and when I do, I don't buy anything because I don't drink and I always eat beforehand), I don't travel often, I don't gamble, I don't take drugs (I used to, which is expensive as fuck), not even caffeine (no coffee, tea, redbulls), and I'm generally not a materialistic person (I generally don't buy "things"). It's good to develop a sense of the whole picture. All in all, the way to counter irrational cheapness is by consciously examining places where your cheapness is counterproductive to your life.

Haha I don't think we've interacted much as I only started to be more active just before you left. Welcome back though, Doc

The best way to describe your personality would be to write an essay about yourself. I wonder if any personality models have been made by looking at essays from many different people and trying to find common themes among them... (*erm* Clare Graves' emergent cyclical theory, later developed into Spiral Dynamics, although it's technically not a personality theory but an ontogenetic theory).

@Husseinisdoingfine Read my Great Wall of China of text.

How has that verse anything to do with what you just said? Case in point.

The point is that disabling a block requires a degree of planning while clicking on a short in front of you merely requires an impulse to click on it (which there is a strong selection pressure for them to be able to do). That distinction is night and day for driving addictive behavior. Making something inaccessible to your immediate awareness is a really smart way of keeping your impulses in check. That's why keeping your phone outside of view or even in another room while studying is smart if you have trouble looking at your phone impulsively.

I like that you like it 😊 Fully committing to exercises is one of the best things you can do 😊

I've had this feeling since I was a little kid: preaching is like 80% about getting off on the aesthetics of how words are used and 20% about the message.

Coincidentally and independent of Leo's blog post, I recently decided to stop watching clip compilations. There is this one channel (UnusualVideos) that has just the most insanely good clips, I have to rewind them 3-4 times to believe my own eyes. It's just one after another. It never stops. It's hard to imagine how he manages to find all of them. Anyways, I don't know if it's the teachings of the likes of John Vervaeke or the entire "high consciousness" intellectual sphere (they all seem to tie back to either Curt Jaimungal or Game B) that I've been exposing myself to that has caused this development in me, but I've gotten increasingly aware of how meaningless and mentally toxic it is to watch hundreds of 7-second clips back-to-back like this, not just intellectually, but on an embodied level (I "feel" the phenomena as its happening). About the intellectual understanding though, the things that are meaningful and nourish your soul can be boiled down to four concepts: 1. purpose (are you aimed towards a goal?), 2. coherence (do things fit together and make sense?), 3. flow (do you engage in activities for their own sake, i.e. intrinsic enjoyment or value?), 4. mattering (are you a part of something larger than yourself?). Now, clip compilations, TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts; all these sites that employ short clips and a scrolling function, are sorrowly lacking in all except one of these points: 1. It does not contain purpose. It's not working towards anything. Clear and simple. 2. It does not involve coherence in any significant sense. You jump from one clip to the next where there is generally no sense of continuity or development of narrative, theme or context. It's just pure nihilistic postmodernism and hedonism put into a technological device. 3. It does contain flow (intrinsic enjoyment), but so does eating ice cream, jerking off and taking drugs. It's not a high bar to pass. It's the only thing it has going for it. 4. It does not matter in any significant sense. It does not make you feel like you're a part of something larger than yourself. It's just you sitting and scrolling. Of course, there is a comment section under each clip, but these also run into the problem of a lack of coherence. The feeling of belonging to these "communities" is as short-lasting as the clip itself. You don't really feel like you belong to these communities. It's more like you're there as a visitor. There are no deeply felt relationships, no sense of productive contribution, sacrifice or reciprocity. And of course, from a more conventional cognitive perspective, the short clips zap your attention span, the highly stimulating and sensational nature of the clips (often containing seduction, violence, surprise, disgust) numbs you to the experience of everyday life, and you just know you're wasting your time and you're itching to get yourself out of the loop, but it's hard because it's addictive. All in all, it's literally consuming garbage. It's all the negative tropes of TV zombies that your parents warned you about come to life, times ten. Anyways, so that is why I think I got so turned off by clip compilations. Now, do you want to see something which I recently learned and which I did find very meaningful? Here it is: Cosmogeny (astrophysical evolution), e.g. gas clouds to stars, to planets, to moons. -> Phylogeny (biological evolution), e.g. fish to amphibian, to reptile, to mammal. -> Ontogeny (individual development), e.g. child to adolescent, to young adult, to mature adult. -> Microgeny (moment to moment), e.g. seeing the raw visual data of an apple, to experiencing arousal, to forming some mental concept about it ("apple", "edible"), to thinking about the apple ("am I hungry?"), to planning to eat the apple, to executing that plan, etc. See how they all are nested into each other like holons? That's coherence right there. See how they matter to you in terms of understanding yourself as a part of the universe, as a life form, as a human, as a being moment to moment? That's mattering right there. See how fun it is to understand these deep interpenetrating relationships between different levels of reality? That's flow, intrinsic enjoyment. Now, what purpose does it have? Maybe that is more up to you. For me, the purpose is to further my understanding, which then actually feeds into all these aspects of meaning like I've just demonstrated. So it wraps around itself quite nicely. This "wrapping around itself" is what I think I find so fascinating about particularly John Vervaeke's work. By talking about meaning; by explicating the structure of meaning (coherence), by sharing it with others (mattering), by enjoying the process of understanding meaning (flow), by making the purpose the furthering of understanding itself; you're doing the very thing you're talking about, as you're talking about it, as you're doing it, and arguably to the greatest degree (because it feeds on itself; it's a positive feedback loop). It's absolutely fascinating. By the way, I learned about this yesterday when listening to a curious conversation between Ken Wilber and Lana Wachowski, one of the Wachowski sisters who created The Matrix Trilogy. That conversation itself also has a definite "wrapping around itself" going on (I mean, these are high conscousness people; who would've thought that the creators behind The Matrix are even deeper than what the movie suggests? ).

I feel resistance towards the question. Merely forming the thought that I want to avoid something somehow feels like it creates a shadow dynamic in my mind, which means I will only have to expose myself more to that thing at some point to undo that split. I guess I did the philosopher thing of answering the question by deconstructing it (or did I? Have I expressed that I wanted to avoid something, or have I merely avoided it? )

I mean, the progression from 2-Back to high-end 4-Back says a lot. Other than that, it does actually feel like I've gained an additional 10 IQ points. I think faster, read faster, write faster, perform mental arithmetic faster, stumble less often when I speak, I'm better at listening to people speak, understanding things, etc. I think another thing that helped significantly was adding sprints to my training regimen, so that may be a confound for how I feel subjectively, but still, I was advancing in n-Back ability before that as well.

God. Just a heads-up, you will need to calm down that preacher talk a good bit if you want to stay here. We promote a pluralistic approach to religion; no proselytizing, no "turning to Christ". We appreciate your understanding

No. I think it's likely we have a soul, but I'm saying that what it entails is different from what most people would believe.

Consistency over volume for this. My routine is 10 sets every other day, which takes 17-18 minutes if you rest 10-20 seconds between each set. It's not a big investment in terms of time, but it can make you a bit tired, so you should ideally not prioritize it over work. I sometimes crank out those sets while commuting, so no time is really lost. I think it's definitely worth the investment. My mind is a lot quicker than it used to be.

Progress on Dual-4-Back Maybe 5-Back soon?

That was not my intention. It's just that the idea of a soul becomes less attractive once you realize that it's the process of the flesh (and the accompanying egoic identification) leaving you which is what you fear (if you indeed fear it), not the existence beyond the flesh. The "you" that you fear losing (your limited identity) is going to be lost, at least temporarily, and that is the case irrespective of there being a soul or not. I don't think the process of dying involves some astral version of you causally ascending out of your body with your normal sense of self intact and floating to some concrete astral realm where you wait for the next incarnation or heavenly realm. It's a much more expansive, mind-altering and non-spatio-temporal experience than that (and maybe you'll agree since you say you've had near-death experiences). We are not just flesh, but we are also one with everything. Oneness has nothing to do with flesh in particular. Oneness has to do with everything.

The concept of a soul is not as attractive once you realize it's the dying process you fear, not what happens after. But sure, there could be a string of memories from other lives associated with this body-mind that would imply the concept of a soul, but still, that doesn't make you overcome the fear of dying (which is what most people use the belief in the soul to cope with). That is what the real spiritual quest is about.

Proactive deception becomes highly uncomfortable from firstly an energetic perspective. There is an intuitive recognition that this is unhealthy (and a feeling that you are denying what is, which is yourself). You could explain this by the fact that when you lie, you create a conflict in your mind. You have to simulate a reality where the lie is the truth, which of course conflicts with what you think is true. Also, you have to act like as if you believe the lie when you're telling it, which also conflicts with what you think is true. This state of conflict (neurosis, disorder, entropy) degrades the quality of your mental state, and because you become more sensitive to changes in your mental state as you engage in spirituality, you'll be increasingly compelled to avoid this. More generally, if you start to lie a lot, over time, your mind will be so used to throwing out lies that you will literally have trouble judging lie from reality, which is scary. Besides, people will eventually find out that you're a liar, and your life will turn pretty sour pretty quickly. Essentially, lying is inherently toxic for your mind and also your life, and spirituality makes you more sensitive to the signals associated with this.

New years is the time of the year where people talk about making a change about the same things as last year. It's talked about as a time of change, but in reality, it's just one part of the same cycle which repeats every year. Conscious change depends little on the seasons. It mostly depends on you.

Spoiler: they all say the same thing. Sadhguru: Ken Wilber: Sri Anandamayi Ma: Gary Weber: 33:12 Gary Weber's video goes into the science behind what is happening (prolonged deactivation of the Default Mode Network).

Your title seems a bit mismatched to what you wrote under it, but according to research on the Big 5 personality traits, conscious leaders have: high extroversion, high openness, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism, high agreeableness.